John Cage / Morton Feldman: Radio Happenings I - V
Recorded at WBAI, New York City, July 1966 - January 1967

John Cage and Morton Feldman recorded four open-ended conversations at
the studios of radio station WBAI in New York. These meetings spanned six months between July 1966 and January 1967, and were produced as five "Radio Happenings". Both were at transitional points in their music. Cage had completed Variations V in 1965 and Variations VI and VII in 1966, and would publish "A Year from Monday" in 1967. Most of Feldman's important work was yet to come. These conversations between two old friends, relaxed, smoking, and throwing out ideas, are full of laughter and long ponderous silences. They form an incredible historical record of their concerns and preoccupations with making music, art, society, and politics of the moment.

In 1993 these conversations were transcribed and published as "Radio Happenings I-V" by Edition MusikTexte in Cologne, Germany, with a German translation and a preface by Christian Wolff. However, the printed page loses so much that can only be experienced by hearing these two speaking together again - even those long, meaningful silences.

III: 28 December 1966
"There is so little talk these days." Talking in England. The ICA lectures. Kitaj. David Sylvester. English pompousness. Cardew. Compositions as "work-in-progress". Thinking about Mozart. Webern and other possibilities for new music. Differences between Boulez and Stockhausen piano pieces.
Varese and process. Space, silence, notation, scales. Finding the vertical. Grandeur of Varese. Stockhausen's refusal. Looking into the future. Buckminster Fuller's ideas on ending war.

Thanks to the Estate of Morton Feldman and the John Cage Trust for permission to share this historic interview. All Rights Reserved.

plus-circle Add Review

comment

Reviews